Weaving data and analytics alchemy.
Every time a Cleanaway truck picks up a waste bin, it also picks up data, lots of data – and it’s that information that is the key to efficiency, service reliability and profits. For Cleanaway it’s a case of turning garbage into gold.
ASX-listed Cleanaway operates Australia’s largest waste management business. With around 6,000 people employed around the country, 5,300-plus vehicles – most of which are equipped with an array of data gathering Internet of Things (IoT) sensors – and 250 sites, the organisation has grown organically and through acquisition.
Each time it has bought a new business it has inherited its information technology and data. The challenge for Maayan Dermer, who leads data and analytics at Cleanaway, has been to develop a data and analytics platform that can bring together all that information from multiple sources – super-charge it with modern AI and advanced analytics, and turn it into insights gold for the business.
Running a waste management business is complex; there are people to roster on, to keep safe and pay, there are vehicle routes to be scheduled, trucks to be maintained, client contracts to be managed. Services can be impacted by truck weight, weather, locked bins, blocked gates, contamination and a host of other issues that impact efficiency and the customer experience.
Cleanaway needs transparency over all these issues.
Dermer joined Cleanaway just before the pandemic struck in early 2020. As an essential service, the business continued to operate throughout COVID-19, collecting more and more waste – and data – each day.
There was a clear opportunity to inject efficiency he says; “We are collecting data from all our services, if I’m going to pick a bin 100 times and I know now the average weight of it and I know all the average weights of all the bins in the neighbourhood, I could actually be much more efficient in how I route collections, price services, segment clients and more.”
Rapid development
The data available for analysis is immense – more than 150 million transactions a year detail Cleanaway’s waste streams and fresh data from Cleanaway’s fleet comes into the organisation every two minutes.
The opportunity for Cleanaway is to harness this data and use it to drive value through its operations. Cleanaway has begun investment in data and analytics using Databricks and Azure Synapse Analytics powered by Azure Data Factory to create the platform.
Now, Cleanaway has not just data – but genuine insights.
